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chrstphrchvz

opened on Apr 25, 2023

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Bug report

Separated out from #103194 (comment) since I believe this likely should be addressed first.

TIP 538 means that Tcl 8.7 can be built to use separately-built libtommath, and no longer recommends building with the bundled libtommath. tclTomMath.h requires tommath.h, which Tcl will no longer install a copy of even when the bundled libtommath is used (as another user recently found out: https://core.tcl-lang.org/tcl/info/ff255adc4cb5). Either tommath.h must be obtained separately, or TCL_NO_TOMMATH_H must be defined before including tclTomMath.h.

Package managers presumably would want to build Tcl against separately-built libtommath once they update to 8.7, and in turn build Tkinter against separately-built Tcl and libtommath. But given that nothing else in CPython uses libtommath, how much would the official Python binary distributions prefer that Tcl continue building its bundled libtommath?

Linked PRs

• gh-103839: Allow building Tkinter against Tcl 8.7 without external libtommath #103842

Activity

1. chrstphrchvz

   added

   type-bugAn unexpected behavior, bug, or errorAn unexpected behavior, bug, or error

   on Apr 25, 2023
2. ned-deily commented on Apr 25, 2023

   

   ned-deily

   on Apr 25, 2023

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   Presumably this is only an issue for the Windows builds and for macOS installer builds? My initial reaction is that we provide a Tcl binary solely to run Tk in turn solely to run tkinter-based applications; we have no need to provide a full Tcl installation with all its third-party dependencies as many of them duplicate functionality provided directly by Python and can only somewhat indirectly used via tkinter. So, if libtommath falls into that category, adding a something (like TCL_NO_TOMMATH_H to our builds of Tcl seems fine. Other opinions?

   Reacted by Christopher Chavez
3. terryjreedy commented on Apr 25, 2023

   

   terryjreedy

   on Apr 25, 2023

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   @serhiy-storchaka @zooba tcl/tk build question. I suspect your answer will match Ned's.
4. arhadthedev

   added

   type-featureA feature request or enhancementA feature request or enhancement

   topic-tkinter

   buildThe build process and cross-buildThe build process and cross-build

   type-bugAn unexpected behavior, bug, or errorAn unexpected behavior, bug, or error

   and removed

   type-bugAn unexpected behavior, bug, or errorAn unexpected behavior, bug, or error

   type-featureA feature request or enhancementA feature request or enhancement

   on Apr 26, 2023
5. zooba commented on Apr 28, 2023

   

   zooba

   on Apr 28, 2023

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   Yeah, I'd rather omit the dependency. (I couldn't find a nice way to omit the zlib DLL dependency, which is why we now have to carry a second copy of zlib, but let's not use that as precedent to add more unnecessary weight.)
6. terryjreedy commented on May 17, 2023

   

   terryjreedy

   on May 17, 2023

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   @ned-deily @zooba Do you comments constitute approval of #103842? (I suspect so but don't understand build stuff.) If so, please say so there and maybe one of you merge it. Should it be backported?
7. zooba commented on May 17, 2023

   

   zooba

   on May 17, 2023

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   That PR seems to be a fairly trivial preprocessor check? Assuming it works, it doesn't bother me at all. Python 3.13 is the first that might include Tcl 8.7 on Windows, so if it helps people who are building on other platforms, it can go wherever it likes.

   Or did you mean a different PR?

   Reacted by Ned Deily
8. ned-deily

   added a commit that references this issue on May 19, 2023

   gh-103839: Allow building Tkinter against Tcl 8.7 without external li…

   625887e
9. ned-deily commented on May 19, 2023

   

   ned-deily

   on May 19, 2023

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   I've merged the PR (thanks!) to main for inclusion in 3.12. Rather than set potentially false expectations, I think we should not backport it until and unless we decide to backport future PRs to fully support 8.7.
10. ned-deily

    closed this as completedon May 19, 2023
11. terryjreedy commented on May 19, 2023

    

    terryjreedy

    on May 19, 2023

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    As I mentioned on the tracking issue #104568, I decided to backport at least the test fixes to 3.11 and note things not backported.
12. carljm

    added a commit that references this issue on May 20, 2023

    Merge branch 'main' into gsallam/main

    ea5965a

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